ClearChannel Launches "Pandora Killer" iHeartRadio Public Beta | Hacker News Reader

ClearChannel Launches "Pandora Killer" iHeartRadio Public Beta

iheart.com

15 pointsbyoung222 comments

Clear Channel's self rebranding as iHeart Radio has been pretty interesting to listen to.

Clear Channel had become something of this monolithic monster in the realm of public opinion [1] for all of the reasons people grew to hate terrestrial radio: corporate music selection, over playing top singles, too many commercials, the death of the DJ and turning local stations over to robots. Clear Channel had an image problem, and a bad one.

Enter iHeart Radio.

All of the branding and message has changed now, when you're listening to a Clear Channel radio station. They're no longer a Clear Channel Communications Radio Network, they're an iHeart Radio Channel. We've got this app, music on demand and ad free to the end of the year! It's happy, it's light. It riffs off of the wildly successful I (heart) New York tourism campaign. The message is consistent and unified across all stations, to the point that it has made me realize how many radio stations in the area are run by the same people.

It's been pretty remarkable, from a marketing standpoint. We'll see if the people bite.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Channel_Communications#Cr...

I've been using the iHeart Radio iPhone app for a while and like it well enough, and I stream my local Clear Channel station over the web a lot (Mix 94.5 out of Lexington, KY - I live about a mile out of range to actually get it clearly on the radio). I could see myself using this quite a bit, but the "you must Like us on Facebook" thing is a real turn-off for me, so for now I think I'll stick to what I've got.

I think ClearChannel maybe missing the point. With terrestial radio you only have some many listening options, and CC was voracious in taking over as many stations as they could, then driving costs down by homogenizing across their stations. But the net is all about personalization and choice. Their strong-arming Facebook "like" clicks in exchange for listening is another tactic that might work if you're the only game in town, but they're not. And most of the people I know dislike their mediocre programming. I suspect the only people calling this a "pandora killer" are CC's marketing people.

Hey, this looks cool.

> Like us on facebook!

Back to Pandora.

I've only played with it for an afternoon, but this is a killer service.

It offers streaming of local radio stations, complete with title, artwork and lyrics for what is playing if available.

Then if offers Pandora-like artist based radio stations.

I see no reason to only use one of these services, but this is def a viable alternative to Pandora.

Is this a sign of the music industry starting to get a clue?

"It offers streaming of local radio stations"

As someone who has worked in college radio I find this statement strange -- ClearChannel defined itself by simulcasting automated radio shows across the country. Their near-monopoly of commercial spectrum in the 90s rendered 'local radio stations' nonexistent, and NPR took care of most of the non-profit (under 92Mhz) spectrum as well.

It only offers ClearChannel radio stations -- so no indie or non-profit.

But "98.1 KISS FM, SF Bay's Old School" is a local radio station, no?

The combination of ClearChannel's homogenization and the internet in general means people have largely forgotten the actual cool part of local radio. It doesn't mean that a particular transmitter is located in the Bay Area or that your daytime commute comedy show hails from the Bay Area either -- talk to someone who grew up listening to radio in the 70s. They will tell you who their late-night DJ was and what records they introduced to the area. This person was as important as the music itself -- much like Arrington breaking a story was as important as the story itself (for better or worse).

The rise of music blogs is the closest modern analog -- instead of centering around a geographic area, people center around a 'scene.' One can also get the same experience listening to amateur radio shows occasionally hosted on, for example, http://di.fm.

The streaming of local radio stations in this app has been around for 6 months or so. Just the Pandora part is new.

What if one doesn't have a facebook account? It's only a public beta insofar as one does? Boo.

Even assuming "everyone" has a Facebook account, why do they force me to "like" their site and add clutter to my Facebook profile just to log in and try their service? More to the point, why would I ever "like" something that I haven't even gotten the chance to try yet?

This single requirement will stop me from trying their app. I have never, nor will I ever, use my FB login for another companies service. If that's the only way to log in, I won't bother using the service.

That was my thought exactly. Clicked over, saw it required facebook, closed the page immediately.

I know most here won't like the Facebook thing (I'm not joining because of it), but I think its fairly deviously brilliant marketing tool. If I were them I'd be okay with losing some signups with the flip side being getting the viral marketing done for free.

A fair approach would be to allow me to use the thing for a day without "liking" it. Then they could say "Like it so far? Then click the Like button and listen on!" and only after that keep me out if I don't.

I don't think they'd get much fewer likes this way and at least they would be genuine. Plus, since more users would sign up to test the service, perhaps the numbers would even play to their advantage.

They have ~1.3 million people (at the time of this comment) who have liked it and joined the beta. The privacy concerned outliers are likely much lower in number than the additional people gained by the viral FB network launch. How many other services have that type of adoption on a first day beta?

Isn't it against Facebook policy to use the like button in this manner?

http://developers.facebook.com/policy/

You must not incentivize users to use (or gate content behind the use of) Facebook social channels, or imply that an incentive is directly tied to the use of our channels.

HAHAHA as if I would use anything by clear channel - I have been using Pandora since launch and use it every single day on 4 different devices.

The only thing better than Pandora is Saver2

Interesting. I've been hearing a lot of ads for this thing called 'iHeartRadio' on the actual radio for a while now. Mostly it was to advertise some concert in Las Vegas - http://www.iheartradio.com/cc-common/iheartradio-music-festi...

I had no idea this sort of service was associated with it.

The IHR music festival was to build buzz for the launch of the new IHR app. The concert will also be livestreamed on the IHR site and app.

I am a ClearChannel employee

Ignoring the deal-breaker Facebook requirement, I only have one question:

I live in Canada, is it US only?

I was interested, but when I tried in 2 different browsers, liking and then logging on with Facebook didn't work - got an ajax loading GIF and then nothing. Fail, they just lost me.

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